It was the return of Reggie Fils-Aimé at Nintendo’s E3 Spotlight show, who quite magically entered the stage, that hyped our anticipation of what to expect this year.

He excitedly began:

Fun and battle always lock together

Reggie talked about gaming as a journey and a ‘passport to new worlds’. This nicely tied into some stunning footage from Monolith Soft’s epic new game Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

This writer instantly recognised the distinct, beautiful and ethereal sound from Xenoblade Chronicle’s composers: Yasnori Mitsuda, ACE (Tomori Kudo and Hiroyo ‘Chico’ Yamanaka), Kenji Hiramatsu, and Manami Kiyota who have returned to compose the game’s soundtrack. Yasnori Matisuda has stated that, upon completing the soundtrack, it brought him to tears. We can hope that there’s a deluxe version of Xenoblade 2 which includes the music, fingers crossed…

From the trailer we can hear that the voice actors are British (again!) and Australian, which is always nice to see in a massive Japanese sci-fi RPG (and given that D-pad Joy is a UK site, it feels closer to home).

Xenoblade 2 follows the main character Rex on a quest to find Elysium. Here’s Nintendo’s blurb:

Explore an endless ocean of clouds, where the last remnants of civilization live on the backs of colossal beasts called Titans. Experience the story of Rex and his new friend, Pyra, a mysterious being known as a Blade who grants him tremendous power. Together, search for Pyra’s long lost home Elysium, the ultimate paradise for all of humanity.

The visuals look clean with the change to a more Chibi art style (in manga and anime, these are child-like cutesy versions of characters).

Narrative wise, we can expect that they’ll follow on in this game with some humorous moments, contrasting heavily with very serious emotional scenes that drive the characters forward. No doubt they’ll throw in a lot of unexpected twists into the story too!

We’ll be able to play in many different ways: with the Joy-Cons or with the Pro controller, away and at home – so this will be very unique when experiencing a huge RPG like Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

Unexpectedly announced for Holiday 2017 (which is sooner than we anticipated and just in time for Christmas), Xenoblade 2 will no doubt provide hundreds of hours of gameplay.

Are you surprised about the announcement and the release date? Will you be buying Xenoblade Chronicles 2?